Greetings! I am Mark Brill (The Brillustrator) and I have created this blog as a place to post my sketches, drawings, comics, paintings, paper sculptures and just whatever the hell I happen to be doing!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Magnificent Seven

I missed a couple of days through just being busy. You'd think that being off work, I'd have MORE time rather than less to do these sketches...and truthfully, I did some sketching, but it was on a private project that I'm not ready to display here.

But today I've decided to kick off my "Magnificent Seven"! Seven days of sketching comic book heroes of the Old West. I'm starting off with the controversial Rawhide Kid. When Marvel did a miniseries of Rawhide, drawn by Johnny Severin--whom I have always loved--I was excited that they were going to play on his alleged gayness and make him an outright (pardon the pun) homosexual character.

It turned out, it was just kind of all in fun...sort of a parody (meaning it wasn't meant to stand as 'canon'). The homosexual idea was only ever implied. The extent of his "gay" portrayal was a series of innuendos and stereotypical gags. Personally, I didn't mind it so much...I still thought it was a neat story and I enjoyed him flaming around the wild frontier. But I am in the minority there. Most folks in the gay community were really irritated about it.

The thing that DID offend me was the fact that despite the complete lack of ANYTHING even remotely explicit, they still insisted on including a warning label on the cover of each issue! Implying, of course, that the mere fact that they were even insinuating he was gay meant that the book was unfit for younger readers! But I loved the story and, even more the art, so I bought it anyway. Ah well...one step forward, two steps back.